When Tastes Differ

The Art Of Compromise Is The Salvation Of Couples With Divergent Decorating Views

March 29, 1992|By Suzanne Slesin, New York Times News Service.

Some people want to call the whole thing off when they don`t see eye-to-eye.

Others stick together in spite of their differences: When she says Victoriana, he says hard-edge metal; she buys modern, he cherishes Grandma`s table; she`s Sports Channel, he`s Coltrane.

Never mind.

In the eternal dance of acceptance and assertion, some stylistically mismatched couples have made it through the home furnishing wars.

Elizabeth Herz, a Manhattan real-estate broker, summed up the design differences she has with her husband this way: ``I picked out the piano for the way it looks, he chose it for the music. Ralph is practical, I`m the aesthetic one.``

When they were married 20 years ago, Elizabeth Herz brought ``all my modern stuff`` to the union. Her husband, Ralph, medical director of American Group Practice, health-care management consultants, had ``lots of his grandmother`s stuff from Cleveland and some pieces from an ex-girlfriend,``

she said.

Ralph might have guessed there would be changes when he discovered his wife had traded in the 1949 Rolls-Royce he gave her as a wedding gift for two Le Corbusier sofas.

Mix agreed upon

These days, their New York apartment is a captivating mix: In the living room, a Rietveld chair is paired with an early 18th Century Windsor chair and an abstract painting of Mt. Fuji by Saito above a 19th Century ancestral portrait.

The carved wood table in the living room is dear to Ralph. ``It was my grandmother`s,`` he said. On it stand two big globes, one atop the other; this is what the Herzes call their ``Gone With the Wind`` lamp, which could have been in Tara. ``Ralph nearly fainted when I agreed to buy it,`` Elizabeth said.

The dining room is another matter. It is furnished with Elizabeth`s marble-topped, chrome-base table by Gae Aulenti, an Italian architect, with Thonet cane and chrome chairs.

On the wall is a small painting by Adriaen van Ostade, a pupil of Rembrandt`s. ``The subject is nit-picking, maybe not the best subject to look at during dinner,`` Elizabeth said. ``But I`ve grown to love it.``

The Herzes` design truce was not reached overnight. Many of the things Elizabeth was not fond of made their way out the back door to the thrift shop. ``They started out as far away as the bedroom,`` Ralph said. ``It takes a few years for a piece to move, say, to the dining room. But when it gets close to the kitchen, I know it`s headed straight to the service elevator.

``My couch made the journey in stages. The pillows stayed around for a few years; then they went, too.``

When Barbara Griff (white silk blouse, pearls) met Bob Winshell (jeans, checked shirt) nine years ago, she was living in a one-bedroom apartment in New York.

``It was done in a very Victorian way,`` said Griff, a television producer and public-relations consultant.

Winshell said diplomatically, ``I thought Barbara was terrific and her place was well, very different from my aesthetic needs-more contemporary, you know, a lot of iron and steel.``

When they met, he lived in a big Dutch Colonial house in New Jersey, worked as a photographer and was becoming a sculptor and art furniture maker. They decided to move to a loft in Manhattan. Combining their two styles was a surprisingly smooth operation: an antique quilt now hangs on the wall. Hers, right?

``That was mine,`` Winshell said a bit sheepishly. ``I bought it in New Jersey years ago, but before Barbara, it spent its life in a closet. It was the colors, not the antique aspect, that caught my eye.``

Hartley and Fontaine

In a rambling prewar apartment, Pat Hartley and Dick Fontaine, who usually work well together, are busy fine-tuning their living styles.

Hartley is a producer and writer, and her husband, Fontaine, is the director of feature documentaries and music videos; they moved to New York from London 11 years ago.

The apartment seemed like just the right temporary place for them. But though Hartley said that ``the living room was empty for four years and I loved it that way,`` she is an inveterate rescuer of things like pianos that are about to be thrown out or embroidered fabric ends or a Buddha that had been in a thrift shop.

So, slowly, things accumulated. One day, in an effort to hold back the tide of clutter, Hartley decided to throw out dozens of pairs of high-heeled shoes that she no longer wore. She was ambushed in the hall by Fontaine, who took possession of the shoes.

``I couldn`t face the specter of throwing out our past,`` he said. ``And anyway, I liked the way they look.``